The Best Jazz Guitar is Jeff Parker’s Jazz Guitar

Best Jazz Record of 2022
Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy
Eremite Records

Reviewed by Henry Cherry

Four selections of sets from Jeff Parker’s Monday evening live performances with his quartet are the basis of his most recent release, Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy. There is no actual tennis involved. ETA is a small restaurant venue in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. The extended name is a nod to late writer David Foster Wallace. It’s that sort of place, oranges in a bowl on the bar, oysters on the half-shell, and Jeff Parker working his way through the situational complications of jazz in the digital era.

Parker’s previous work in Tortoise made him a paragon of indie-fried exploratory sounds that partnered him with avant guitarists like Nels Cline and Marc Ribot. Where Cline augmented his outré work with solo outings and insular but brilliant collaborations with Carla Bozulich, he really found his footing by joining the band Wilco. Ribot went deeper into the out sounds of free jazz before returning to the atmosphere with a series of soundtracks for silent movies. Parker’s trajectory has been equally eclectic, but somehow more earnestly jazz focused. He too has pushed into avant-garde, but even in his outré moments, Parker’s resilience to groove has granted a chordal accessibility to his music. It is from this investigative realm that Parker and company oscillate post-bop, post-punk, post-avant-garde…